News & events

Bug hotels to LED lighting: CCFE aiming for a greener lab | 05/06/2014

As you would expect from a lab developing cleaner energy, CCFE is always looking to reduce its own impact on the environment. A series of projects at Culham over the last 12 months led to second prize in the Green Progress Awards at the Thames Valley Business Awards last November. And since then we have made more improvements to our environmental management.

The Green Progress Awards, sponsored by Grundon, concentrated on sustainable innovations in waste management and other ‘green' practices and highlighted the progress made. The prize for CCFE recognised our recent environmental measures such as:

Installation of efficient lighting within buildings, reducing our energy consumption by over 28,000 kilowatt hours and saving more than 15,000kg of CO2 per year;

Diverting general waste from landfill to an Energy from Waste facility through contractual arrangements, meaning a 93% reduction in CO2 emissions;

Reducing transport emissions through the promotion of our Cycle to Work scheme and event, where staff get a free breakfast for cycling into work;

Reducing paper use across the site through removing desktop printers, using Multi-Functional Devices and using default settings to print double-sided;

Installing LED street lighting across the site, saving over £17,000 in electricity costs in one year alone as well as the equivalent to 102 return flights from London to New York per year in CO2emissions;

Recovering material from waste for reuse and recycling through our Environmental Waste team.

Since November, CCFE has been working on a new series of environmental projects:

Reducing water use at our onsite water treatment facility, resulting in a saving of 4,800m3 in just three months;

Promoting biodiversity through the creation of ‘bug hotels' around site to help create habitats and encourage more species of wildlife;

Selling reusable containers and mugs in our on-site restaurant to promote a reduction in waste;

CCFE Environmental Officer Rachel Seymour (pictured at a wildflower meadow that has been created on the Culham site) comments: “Although we've made good progress recently, we aren't stopping there. There are more projects planned for the year ahead, including reducing electricity used for the cooling towers on the JET machine and further building improvements.”